Professor Adrian Bell at the CFA Middle East Investment Conference

Infrastructure is the new buzzword in finance these days even though infrastructure has been important at least since the days when the Romans built their roads across Britain and Europe. The difference today is that increasingly the government says it cannot finance such infrastructure - roads, railways, power generation, telecoms, airports etc. The telecoms industry is already completely privately owned in most countries as are an increasing number of airports across the world. But governments everywhere are now looking ever more to public private partnerships (PPPs) to provide the annual funding (the annual revenues required to service bank loan and bond interest payments and capital repayments and equity dividends) as well as the actual financing (the arranging of bank loans, bond issues and equity share issues) to provide the cash up-front.

Last week saw yet another established high street chain store file for administration.

Nadia Edwards-Dashti (Founder and MD at the Harrington Starr Group, Winner - Investing in Talent 2019 Awards - Most Inspirational Rec Leader) was our ICMA Centre guest speaker on Wednesday 19 February.